Everyone gets the urge to pick their noses every so often, but this is no excuse to stick your finger deep in your nose and pluck out the clotted snot when people are watching. It is as disgusting as they get. i can assure you, there aint no gold in there, so stop digging.Patricia, a girl I went to high school with lived for disgusting all of us. After extracting the snot from her nose, she went on to snack on it. Suffice it to say that no one ever accepted any eats from her-not even if you were starving to death. The other day, I saw Patrick; a friend I had not seen in a while was coming towards me. I walked faster, all smiles, eager to meet and catch up with everything I had missed. And just then, he did the unforgivable. He started picking his nose. When I reached him, I ignored the outstretched hand and gave him a huge hug that surprised both of us. And then there was the school cook. It was either a personal vendetta against me, or the guy was just outright creepy. It seemed to me like every time I went to the kitchen, (do not ask what I was doing in that part of school) he would be picking his nose at the same time mingling the posho I was to eat that day. But since I could not go hungry for ever, I consoled myself that the heat had killed all the germs, said a prayer for my soul- since no amount of prayer could redeem that food- and ate.

this one time at…well I can go on and on about disgusting pick your nose in public stories, but that is not the point here A decent handkerchief goes for about shs500, so the next time that overwhelming urge to pick your nose in public hits, do us all a favour and use that handkerchief. That is what they were made for.

You go about your business, even stand instead of sit on the toilet, take time to write a snide comment or two on the walls, or sometimes even smear them with evidence f the business you just took care of, but when it comes to the simple task of just turning a small knob to erase evidence of the activities you just did, you won’t participate. No sir. Not you. Could it be that you think you have done a good job that you leave the results for everyone to see and admire? Could it be that you are in a rush to get out there, you forgot, or is it that you are just plain stupid. No body wants to see that big clump of excreta you just left behind; no one wants that kind of surprise sprung on them. No body wants to smell it. So just do us all a favour and do that very tedious, unpleasant task you can not be bothered to do. Flush the toilet. When you get out f the toilet, let people go through the liberty of asking for directions to the toilet, instead of their good old sense of smell leading them there.It would be pleasant for a change to have to ask for directions to the toilet and not be led there by the gut wrenching, haunting smell emanating from room A. Yes it is a scary place to be. No one wants to be in it for longer than they really need to. But the urge to rush out of the toilet right after shitting is no excuse for not flushing the toilet. People do not go to the toilet for recreation. In fact, the toilet is a very unpleasant place to spend any time, and yet we can not avoid it. So the least unpleasant you can make it for the people who will be faced with the misfortune of coming in after you, the better. At my work place, there are even reminders on the walls for people to remember to flush the toilet-and I work in a place of some of the greatest media minds, but even they have to be reminded to flush the toilet. It is a simple common sense task but people simply won’t do it. But then again no body said common sense was common. To everyone.

The saying goes that sleep- yea not death- is a leveler, but true to tradition, for some of us, the degree of severity is more equal than the others’. Every time I try to remember something from when I was young, I was sleeping. My world for some reason used to revolve around sleep. Father used to say, “you will once be taken away by thieves while sleeping.” But that never seemed to deter me. Boy oh boy did I love my sleep. Wait a minute, I still do.

Because I was not the ideal child for my father, I aimed to please, as a result had this attachment to him that bordered on obsession. I simply adored the guy. As a result I used to hang around him a lot. On one of these afternoons, my dad and I were taking a walk on a dusty kabale road, and before I knew it I was staggering across the road. Dad thought I was just being silly, until ii actually fell in a pot hole. He pulled me out, dusted me and looked at me incredulously. There, I had wasted any chance of convincing him that I would be as good as any boy he had had.

And so my sleeping woes continued, and everyone at home seemed to accept me the way I was. That is how father made his first mistake. Taking me for granted. I loved the times when I fell sick, because then I got to sleep in my father’s bedroom. On one of these nights, my father assuming I was dead asleep, brought a girlfriend a long with him, after a night of drinking and got down to doing that thing that grown ups do.(don’t look shocked, there were two beds in his room) All the while I was listening. The next morning, I wore this all knowing look on my face, that left dad in no doubt that he had been discovered for what he was. Now I had my dad on my finger.

Then there was this time I could not stop dozing while doing my homework, so I decided to take a break and grab some fresh air on the veranda. That is where I was an hour later when I woke up to discover that I was soaked in rain that had been pouring for about 5 minutes before the cold finally rendered me conscious. I became the laughing stock of my family for over a year, until my younger sister shit her dress at school in terror of corporal punishment.

My sleeping habits had everyone scared for me every time they put me on a bus to a certain location, always fearing that I would miss the place while sleeping. They were never wrong. The soft purring of the vehicle as rubber hits stone is just a lullaby for me. Even now, after a hard day at work, it is a miracle that somehow I find my way home from wherever the taxi will have dropped me when I rouse myself from slumber.

And the one memory I am not proud to share is that once I even slept during sex.